Australian MP refers to US policy as 'naive and destructive'

Australia’s Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has been criticised for using an
ill-considered literary reference in an address to Barack Obama which
implied US foreign policy was naive and destructive.

Australian opposition leader Tony Abbott with U.S. President Barack Obama Photo: GETTY IMAGES

By Jonathan Pearlman, Sydney

7:28PM GMT 22 Nov 2011

During an address in Parliament to honour Mr Obama’s visit last week, Mr Abbott, a staunch supporter of the US, cited Graham Greene’s The Quiet American in a manner which suggested that America’s approach to the world mirrored that of Greene’s boyishly ideological character, Alden Pyle. Mr Abbott told the President: “Not for nothing did Graham Greene say of his Quiet American that he had never met a man with such good intentions for all the trouble he caused”.

The reference, in a book widely regarded as anti-American, came as Mr Abbott, a former Rhodes Scholar who heads the conservative Coalition, described the US as the nation that has shouldered the “heaviest lifting” in fending off the threat of totalitarianism and terrorism.

An international affairs analyst at the Lowy Insitute, Rory Medcalf, said in a piece on the *Foreign Policy* website that the reference sounded a “jarring note” and that Mr Abbott may not have appreciated the message he was conveying.

“It is safe to assume that the avowedly pro-American Mr Abbott – who is already offering a permanent US base if he wins government – was not trying to be prescient,” he wrote.

One of Australia’s most senior political journalists, Laurie Oakes, also joined the criticism, writing in a weekend newspaper column: “Even his strongest supporters must wonder what gets into Tony Abbott at times ...

"[The book] portrays US innocence and idealism as destructive. Abbott seemed to understand this [yet] the opposition leader uttered the line as though it was somehow flattering to Obama and America.”

Mr Abbott used his address to respond to Julia Gillard’s announcement that up to 2500 US Marines will be stationed in Darwin.

In a rare show of bipartisan support, Mr Abbott supported the deployment.

Indeed, in his address to Parliament, several moments after his reference to The Quiet American, he went further than Ms Gillard and suggested that Australia should consider stationing the troops on a jointly run facility, rather than an Australian base.

He then proceeded to issue his minor reworking of the famous claim by Mr Greene’s narrator, who says of Alden Pyle that he had never known a man “who had better motives for all the trouble he caused”.

The Lowy Institute’s Sam Roggeveen told The Telegraph Mr Abbott’s literary reference was “strange”, noting that he followed it by endorsing Ronald Reagan’s description of America as the last, best hope for mankind.

“He seems to be saying that America is a flawed giant, but it strikes me as clumsy,” he said.